How can I convert my AOL files, favorites and Address Book info from the America Online (AOL) program to MSN? I am switching from AOL dialup to a new high-speed connection. Please let me know.
While America Online (AOL) is quite popular with a large group of people, it’s also a common place for people to learn about the Internet then “graduate” to a more traditional Internet Service Provider.
The problem is, AOL has lots of proprietary data formats and their entire AOL software suite seems custom designed to make it hard for you to switch to another service, as you’re now realizing. There’s no convenient “Export Address Book” function, for example. Search for that phrase in the AOL 9.0 help system and you’ll get clear details on how to export from other programs and import those addresses into AOL Mail, but not a word about how to export from AOL Mail.
All hope isn’t lost, however. There are a number of different solutions that might be able to help you, ranging from the Java-based (and apparently obsolete) AOLeave suite to the inexpensive ($25) commercial application ePreserver.
With the kind permission of the developers, I was sent a copy of ePreserver, which let me test out this simple application, and though you might only use it once in your life, it’s incredibly fast and easy, probably well worth avoiding the hours of fiddling with free software (at least in my opinion).
Here’s how easy it was for me to export my address book, favorites and folders (file drawers) from my AOL account into a generic data format suitable for importing into Outlook Express (a format that MSN Mail can import, as I recall)…
The first step is to pick which of your screen names you want to copy all the data from:
A word of warning here: if you use more than one screen name, ePreserver appends the subsequent data to the previous, which might well not be what you’re expecting. If that’s not what you want to have occur, move the files elsewhere before you do the second or third run.
Once you’ve picked the account, you can choose which data you want to export into an Outlook or Outlook Express compatible format:
Next, choose between the two possible output formats:
If you’re not sure, choose Outlook Express as it’s the more commonly used of the two email programs and can be imported into a wide variety of Windows and Web based email programs (even Google’s Gmail, actually).
The last step might make you a bit anxious if you’re not expecting it: it’ll ask for your AOL password. Once you’ve entered your correct account credentials, the program will then actually log in to your AOL account and grab all of the information and data you specified. In my experience, this took just a few seconds, and the end result was a status report featuring the cheery Successfully imported messages:
That’s all there is to it with this program. Again, please realize that there are doubtless other free or lower cost applications out there, I just chose the one that appeared the most professional, since I’d rather have it work right the first time. If $25 is too expensive for your budget, then searching for “aol address book export tool” will doubtless lead you to some other choices, but Connected Software does tell me that ePreserver is the only third-party app that can read the encrypted AOL Address Book (nice of them, eh?).
I hope this helps you out!
[…] access with its own software, How to View AOL Favorites · How to Recover My Favorites List How do I export my America Online (AOL) Address Book and Email 24 Oct 2005 How can I convert my AOL files, favorites and Address Book info from the America Online […]
that’s so great for increasing the knowledge.
i am so glad to find this nice post, thank you
I see that there are programs to convert addresses and emails on AOL to Outlook … but NONE to a thumb drive.
I have a good number of AOL incoming emails and AOL sent emails that I have saved on my AOL PFC. I would like to download them onto a thumb drive…. Any suggestions other than creating a hard copy of each?
Please advise.
Hi,
Glad to find this discussion!
I’ve been successfully using the standalone app AOL 10.3.7 on a Powerbook G4 running Mac OS 10.4.11 for a number of years, with my AOL email account.
Unfortunately, on the Intel MacBook Pro that AOL application can no longer keep a record of Sent Mail on the computer itself, regardless of the OS. (I’m using 10.6.7 currently.)
Can anyone advise me as to an email application, which will allow me to keep a record of all my AOL mail- on the hard drive of the computer?
Incoming/Saved Mail, Mail You’ve Sent, and Mail Waiting to Be Sent
And to which I can transfer my current Filing Cabinet?
I have many years of records in the Filing Cabinet, which I need to retain and access.
I’d rather not use AOL Desktop, but rather be able to work with my email offline.
And have all the files, new and old, stored to the hard drive of the computer.
I’ve been putting this off for years.
Your site here got me into action concerning getting it done!
Thanks for your time!
I am using pcpro4 macmini os10.4.11. overnite my bill pay thru Wells Fargo stopped letting me
pay online. I can access my entire bill pay screen
but when it asks to submit payment, it is “grayed”
out and won’t accept my payment. I was told it is an encrytion error and to notify the bank, who in turn said to notify mac about it. I have just had my
computer checked out and upgraded where required.
Because it is pro series it will only go to 10.5.
I get data coremetrics.com error code -8155, no
one seems able to help.
Hello dear,
I am Jerry Clinton the son of late Jerry Wilson major general in us, I have decide to sale my late father company in west Africa country Ghana, Now I have sale the company and deposited the money in U.B.A Bank of Ghana, And I also want to use the money to establishing a new company in your country which I don’t know the type of company we can invest $40 million on, I want you to look for type of company we can invest $40 million on there in your country, Thank God you are a good business partner, I hope to hear a good plan from you, If you are interested in my proposal then fill this form,
Your full name……………
Your age……………
Your home address………….
Your office address…………..
Your office number……………
Your phone number……………
Your fax number………………..
Your occupation…………………
Your private E-mail……………
You can also contact me with this email (c_jerry78@hotmail.com)
Is there a way to make a hard copy (print) all my AOL addresses – both name and email address?
Dave–By now is there a way to export my aol address book to gmail on a mac? Aol runs on Safari.
Brilliant and so simple! Thank you very much. I’m not changing to my new ISP until 26th September – can I run the program again so the transfer is right up to date?
You’re brilliant Dave!
Thanks. You saved my sanity.
I followed your great notes on how to retrieve all my folders, contacts etc from AOL using ePreserver and it was great!
I reinstalled aol 9.1 on my computer and now I can’t retrieve my saved emails and favorite places. How do I get them back?
i know this has already been asked by someone else, but I see no reply.
On the other hand my address list is unaffected.
I want to Know how to set up an address book as I tried and then when I got back on line it wasn’t there for me to use I need help or some answeres I was on AOL for yeares and did’nt have all the troubel I’m having now so please help. Genevieve Brous
I’ve been trying to figure out how to save my aol stuff for a few days now and want to thank you for all the good info. I’m moving on to a faster service and had no idea how tough it would be to save my aol fav.’s etc. Thanks again, hopefully I’ll figure it all out.
Is this still valid? I have aol 9.0 security edition. Need to export, for many reasons, probably moving, but also, worried about the size of my data base of e-mail in aol, that it will exceed it, and then I’ll lose it altogether!
Thanks.
Hi, I need to export some of my contacts from both my Yahoo account and my Gmail account into an Outlook file so my business partner can enter them into her Contant Contact newsletter. I have Outlook Express on my computer. I tried to follow the directions given in my Yahoo account but it didn’t work. My husband was there and he’s pretty good at this stuff. Is it us, or is there a better way?
EXPORT AOL ADDRESS BOOK AND EMAIL
Based on web comments, today I purchased ePreserver. The total with fees was $29.40. It was worth every cent!
Within one hour, I had transfered over 5000 saved emails and 100 contacts into Outlook 2003. It brings over attachments as individuals documents in MS Office format. All exported without an error.
Okay, so it cost me 30 bucks, but now I am free of AOL forever…
My HD crashed and got a new one. It had outlook express which I have never used. I put in my email addy and password, now it has taken over my aol email. It gives me a 556 error. All my mail is now going to outlook express and I don’t want it. I can not send from outlook as it has the error. I put in the imap and smtp, the deleted it hoping it woudl give me my aol back, it wont. I need help. thanks
Is this info still relevant or are there new tools for exporting AOL mail?
While adding a name to an AOL email group list, I accidently hit something that removed the list. Can I get it back?
How can I reach my favorites sites?
I agree with THEInterwebs
To all of you posting to this thread. Please cancel your AOL accounts, unplug your computers completely, and store them in a closet. Please don’t even think about going online again. Think of the children!
Thanks in Advance
signed,
the rest of the Interwebs.
This is my question also…..
I’ve been an AOL customer for probably 15 years but now also have high speed internet thru my cable company. However, I am leary about changing my email accounts and losing emails, contacts and info. My curiosity about this whole AOL ‘free’ email is growing as it would save money I’m still wasting as I keep my AOL service to keep my AOL email accounts in ‘bringing my own service’. The ‘free’ email is also very confusing to me. Can I actually use (or keep) the same email addresses I currently have with AOL’s ‘free’ email as well as AIM screen names??? Or will I be forced to change them as they would be ‘currently in use’? I’d really like to drop AOL service but not my emails..
How can I transfer mail from an old AOL screen name to another newer one I have? When I updated to AOL 9.1 somehow it was lost and I cannot retrieve my mail. Can’t get ahold of AOL by phone. Anyone know of their mailing address/phone number to talk to a live person? They really, really stink.
from
Re: importing AOL favorites (bookmarks) to Safari or firefox
Posted by: PW (IP Logged)
Date: May 1, 2009 08:36PM
I found this info in a simple google search (export AOL bookmarks safari):
If you use Mac OS X, you only need one program — the free, blissfully simple AOL Service Assistant ( [downloads.channel.aol.com] ), which will transfer your AOL e-mail, address book, favorites and calendar to Apple’s Mail, Address Book, Safari and iCal programs.
I may add – IT WORKS GREAT!!!!!
Hey Dave –
I just bought a MACBook Pro and downloaded AOL for MAC; however, my managed folders do not show up. Is there any way for me to see my folders with saved mail with MAC? I can’t file any emails or read any emails that I’ve filed. Thanks! Jason
simple and free way of exporting your aol address book:
I’ve spent nearly 4 hours trying to figure out some way to trasfer contacts from aol to outlook but aol simply doesn’t give u this option!!!!!
I suggest this was made to discourage people from switching from Aol proprietary system which became just a bunch of crapware.
People mentioned these solutions online:
1) aol communicator – which how I found out was discontinued and i wasn’t able to find it anywhere online.
2) aolsync outlook plugin – simply didn’t work for me.:( Throws an error when I tried to sync. Later someone mentioned that this service no longer works two-ways. – it only sync outlook contacts into aol. Gee – i wonder why?
3) aoleave.com – discontinued. mentions aol 6.0 software on that website 🙁
4) epreserver.com – has a software that transfers everything from aol account – though it’s like 25 bucks which i had absolutely no intention to pay.
And finally – HERE IS HOW TO BACK UP YOUR AOL ADDRESS BOOK FOR FREE! :))
1) Go to Plaxo.com website and sign up – it’s free.
plaxo.com – it’s sort of universal online address book and social networking site. I’ve never heard of it before but I think I’ll definitely use it in the future cuz it proved to be the only simple and FREE way of transferring aol contacts:)
2) During the sign up process it’ll ask you to add contacts from various services like gmail or aim/aol. – so – just enter your aol credentials.
It might ask u if u would like to send invitation to the people in ur address book – just click on skip when that happens.
3) When u pass setup process – click on “More” and than select “Address book”. At this point you should see all aol contacts over there. (luv u plaxo:)
4)Scroll down to the veryy bottom of the page and click on “+ Add sync points”. “Sync wizard” window will popup.
5) click on the option that says export address book (alternatively plaxo offers plugin for automatic sync with ms outlook:) – and it’s free)
6)From the drop down list u can either select .csv or .ldif or .vcf format. I’ve just selected .csv because i was transferring the address book into MS outlook.
That’s it – just save that .csv file on ur desktop and import it into your program of choice.
Mission accomplished.
P.S> plaxo.com kick’s ass. I was so f**cking happy to find it cuz otherwise – I’d have to manually transfer 450 contacts.
“I have been using 9.0 optimized (canada) for a few years,and have continued to save everything in various folders in the “saved on my PC” section. Over all the years, the Screen Name file size has grown to over 2.0 gb. There are over 22,000 saved files there! Each time it hits this magic 2 gb, it stops working properly, and I have had to load an older screen name file over it (that has less than 2gb). In the last week, I have had to contact aol tech service 5 times and have spent many hours dealing with this. I have asked each of them if the large screen name size is what causing it….they won’t admit that may be the cause….they always say there must be a corrupted file in there somewhere, where it cannot be found. Yesterday the fix, after trying everything else, was to uninstall all the old versions I had on the computer, including the excellent Canadian version of 9.0 Optimized. I did that, and downloaded 9.0 VR (I think), as that was all I found readily available. Terrible! The new mail, old mail, and sent mail tabs in the mailbox window all are blank….no name, address, subject or date is displayed….only that there are about 900 emails in the new box.
I used E-preserver to convert all the stuff over to Outlook (pst?) files, but because it was functioning badly when I did it, I don’t think everything came across. I’m thinking, that if maybe I can get it to open the mailbox and the Saved on my pc files, I can go in there and start deleting all the old stuff, one by one….my question is: Would this reduce the screen name file size? What do you think of the older 6.0 and 7.0 versions….do you think they would have the problem with the large amount of stored data? Might I be better off with one of those? I cannot find the Canadian version of 9.0 right now.
My computer is a pentium 4, 3.0 gb, 2gb Ram and a 250 gb hd. My other computer is newer and faster, and I’m having the same problem with aol on it, as well….Your thoughts would be greatly appreciated.”
Bruce
One easy way to save your AOL address book is to install a generic printer (LPT1:) and specify text only as the output. Use the printers control panel to change the properties so it prints to a file. Now anything you send to this printer, including the AOL 9.1 address book will land in easy to read text format in the file you specify. There is always more than one way to skin a cat.
-AAK
I am using Eudora as my e-mail program. Can I export my AOL 9.1 saved mail (AOL PFC)to Eudora directly, or do I have to first export it to Outlook Express and then to Eudora. Also, can I export my AOL favorite places (bookmarks)from AOL to Internet Explorer using ePreserver.
Thanks in advance for any assistance
Dave,
I’m a PC tech and am working with a client to retrieve several years of messages from AOL, but can only retrieve messages in the AOL INBOX.
I have set a POP3 account on Outlook that successfully downloads messages in his AOL INBOX folder, but am unable to download messages in the SAVED MESSAGES, SENT MESSAGES, or SAVES ON MY PC folders. I’ve tried moving one of the folders in AOL to make it a subfolder of the INBOX, but no luck there.
I called AOL to ask about this and the AOL support person said it couldn’t be done.
I’ve read about an AOL sync utility, but can’t locate any info about whether or not it will sync folders other than the AOL INBOX and don’t want to waste my time and my client’s money on this if it is just another dead end. Do you know if there is a way to retrieve the messages in these folders?
Having assisted many clients using AOL, any comments I have about AOL have already been said a thousandfold over, and none of them are favorable. Even Apple is dropping DRM, but the AOL seems to resemble a black hole – they will gladly import messages into their system, but once in there is no way out.
Thank you,
Philip
Hello Philip,
I know this post is old but i have the same issue with a client. Did you find a solution ?
Thank you for your help.
Question – A friend has a MAC computer and I asked if I could use the computer for a few minutes to look up some info on sprint phones. He said sure and booted up the computer with password, etc. He left the room and I was about to type Sprint into the google browser and all of a sudden his aol email opened up and all the pending emails, etc. were right on the screen – I told him that happened and he said I must have gotten his password or something, that it wouldn’t just “pop up” like that and it started a feud. Can you offer an explanation of how that could happen. Obviously neither of us are that computer savvy but I did not know the email password or even how to access it. Any advise would be appreciated.
I reinstalled aol 9.1 on my computer and now I can’t retrieve my saved emails and favorite places. How do I get them back?
My suggestion for exporting aol address book: Open a Yahoo email account. they have a feature to import the address book from aol. they also have the ability to export to csv file.
Somehow my Aol address book changed. Here is what happened. When putting in an address all I need to do is put in a letter of the alphabet and a person’s email name pops up, except when I get to S. When I click on S each and every one of the people in my address book pops up, including my S people. I recently deleted all my contacts in hopes of “curing” this problem. I re-did the address book last night and the problem is still there! Why?? I don’t understand! Please, tell me how to resolve this.
Thank you,
~Noreen
PS
It used to work perfectly.
Nick, I’m afraid I haven’t even heard of Bento box, other than in Japanese restaurants. 🙂
Harry, call AOL support, I am pretty sure there’s a way to do that but they need to be involved.
how do i take this aol screen name (htorres428@aol.com) and make a new aol account with it. I no longer want to be connected with the same aol account as my ex wife. thanks
can you tell me how to export my address book from AOL to Bento box?
That seems very odd, Olivier. I would suggest that you reinstall AOL, making sure you have the latest version, then also ensure that you have the latest version of ePreserver. If that fails, contact the company and see what they can suggest.
hi dave,
after reading your interesting article about ePreserver, i went ahead and purchased it.
on the first screen, it doesn’t seem to allow me to type in my screename and at the bottom it tells me: “aol &/or compuserve not installed on this computer” or sthing to that matter as it is in french.
is that a software glitch or do i need to re-install aol to be able to use ePreserver to get my adress book (i.e. being connected & logged in to aol isn’t enough..)
thank you in advance for your prompt response.
AOL WHAT THIEFS. BOUGHT GATEWAY LT HSN JULY 20/08 CALLED ALO FOR FREE 6 MONTTH TRIAL? JULY 22 08 THY BILLED MY BEBT CARD A MONTHLY CHARGE. I CALLED 40 MIN. LATER GOING BACK&FORTH I KEEP BEING
HI.
HI,
IT’S ALL NEW TO ME.LETS HOPE 4 THINGS BETTER.
As of April 2008, ePreserver supports converting AOL to Gmail.
For ePreserver to work, you must be using the AOL client, such as AOL 8 or AOL 9 (but not AOL 10.)
My wife is staring an online business and wanted to migrate all of her AOL addresses to a new gmail account – I can see how this software does it for PC’s but she has an iMAC – is there any way we can do this on a mac?
I want to import my address book and favorites list FROM Juno to Yahoo. Will you tell me how to find those instructions? Please.
Had to wipe my drive and reload aol…how can I get my address book back…its on the web version of aol by not on my pc version????
Because AOL does not offer DSL (Broadband) or whatever the term is for FAST DIAL UP, I had to go with QWEST. I would have PREFERRED TO STAY WITH AOL BUT dial up was becoming too bothersome.
BUT NOW….How do I retrieve my AOL Favorites List? I am lost without that list.
PLEASE????
I solved the AOL 9 Favorites export!!!
1. Login to AOL from a regular (ie, firefox, safari) at http://www.aol.com.
2. Go to “my aol”, usually in the top left corner
3. When prompted to “Import AOL Class Favorite Places”, say “yes”. this imports your AOL favorites.
4. At the bottom of the menu, there’s an “export” function which will export to bookmarks.html.
5. Import the file into your favorite browser and clean-up all the AOL specific stuff that you don’t want to keep.
Voila!!!! You are done and it’s free!!!!
Terry